Medieval Africa, 1250-1800

This page intentionally left blank Medieval Africa, – This is a radically revised and updated edition of The African Middle Ages – (first published in ), a companion volume to the authors’ well-known Africa since (now in its fourth edition). Although this volume follows the overall plan of the original, the story now begins years earlier, and takes into account the wealth of supportive literature in African historical studies over the last twenty years. The earlier starting date has enabled the authors to look at the entire continent from a more distinctly African viewpoint. By about African societies were greatly expanding their political and economic scope. Islam was spreading south across the Sahara from Mediterranean Africa, and down the Indian Ocean coast. Medieval Africa continues into the period of European con- tacts from the fourteenth century onwards, with much, but not exclusive, emphasis on the growth of the trans-Saharan, Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trade. The book stresses the strengths, while not overlooking the weaknesses, of African societies as the eighteenth century drew to a close. This volume will be an essential introduction to African history for students, as well as for the general reader. It is illustrated with a wealth of maps. is Professor Emeritus of African History at the University of London, and member of the British Academy. He has published widely on African history, including A Short History of Africa (, translated into languages, revised editions), The African Experience (, revised )andIn the Realms of Gold (). has taught African history in both the UK and Africa. He is the co-author of the companion to this volume, Africa since (with Roland Oliver, editions since ). Medieval Africa, – ROLAND OLIVER ANTHONY ATMORE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 2004 First published in printed format 2001 ISBN 0-511-03129-7 eBook (Adobe Reader) ISBN 0-521-79024-7 hardback ISBN 0-521-79372-6 paperback Contents Listofmapspagevi Prefacevii Introduction:themedievalscene Egypt:al-Misr IfriqiyaandtheRegencies TheIslamicFarWest:Morocco ThewesternSudanandupperGuinea ThecentralSudanandlowerGuinea Nubia,DarfurandWadai Thenorth-easterntriangle TheupperNilebasinandtheEastAfricanplateau TheheartofAfrica Thelandoftheblacksmithkings FromtheLualabatotheZambezi TheapproachestoZimbabwe ThepeoplesoftheSouth Epilogue Furtherreading Index v Maps Africa: geography, rainfall and vegetation page viii Indian Ocean tradingactivities, – Muslim and Christian North-East Africa, – Egypt, the Maghrib and the Saharan trade routes, – ‒ The Maghrib, the Sahara and the Sudan, – Morocco and the western Sudan, – West Africa, – The western Sudan, upper and lower Guinea, – ‒ The central Sudan and lower Guinea, – ‒ Egypt and the Nilotic Sudan, – From the Niger to the Nile, – The Horn of Africa in the age of the Solomonids The Muslim counter-offensive in the Horn The impact of the Oromo in North-East Africa The upper Nile basin and the East African plateau: the distribution of language-families, c. The upper Nile basin and the East African plateau: languages and cultures, c.– The upper Nile basin and the East African plateau: later Iron Age population movements, c.– The upper Nile basin and the East African plateau: settlements of the Nilotes, c.– Northern Central Africa ‒ Western Central Africa From the Lualaba to the Zambezi ‒ The approaches to Zimbabwe Between the Zambezi and the Limpopo Southern Africa ‒ vi Preface This book has emerged in response to an invitation by Cambridge University Press to prepare a Revised Edition of The African Middle Ages – published by them in . We felt that after so long an interval the degree of revision needed to be radical and that this mightbe best achieved by settingan earlier startingdate for the work as a whole. On the one hand this would enable us to look at the entire continent from a more distinctively African viewpoint, free from the bias inevitably imparted by the reliance from the outset on European written sources. On the other hand it would ensure that each of our regional chapters, the strongest no less than the weakest, would have to be redesigned to accommodate the new angle of approach. For the rest, we have divided our treatment of Mediterranean Africa into three chapters rather than two, and we have added a completely new chapter on the least known region of the continent, which is that lyingat its geographicalcentre to the north of the Congo basin. Thus, while we have reused many pas- sages from the earlier work, so much of the writing is new that we feel it right to give it a different title. Like its predecessor, Medieval Africa, – should be seen as a companion volume to our earlier book, Africa since , now in its Fourth Revised Edition and still in wide demand. We hope that, in its new form, it may serve to encourage more teachers and students to explore the pre-modern history of Africa, which has so much of real interest to teach us about how small societies faced the chal- lenges of very diverse, and often hostile, environments and yet managed to interact sufficiently to create significant areas of common speech and culture, to share ideas and technological inno- vations, and to meet the outside world with confidence at most times earlier than the mid-nineteenth century. vii M e d i t e r t s r a n a s M e a A t l n S e a R e l i e S a N d h a r a S e a S Nig a er L. e l B i lu h N Chad e S e t N e i u i d a l h le n i W e c B t Benu e l i g n a Equator b U o ong C L. Victoria L. Tanganyika L. Malawi Rainforest r a c K s bezi Land over 3000 ft a am a l a Z g D h a e a d 16 ins. rainfall p.a. s ri popo a e Lim r t M l g aa r range V e O b 0 1000 2000 km s n ke 0 1000 miles Dra Africa: geography, rainfall and vegetation Introduction: the medieval scene If it is universally acknowledged that geography and climate shape and mould the course of history, it is a truism peculiarly self-evident in Africa, where humankind has had to contend with environmental conditions often harsh and always challenging. The continent’s broad vegetation zones are best portrayed on a map, which will show at a glance the contrast between the areas lying roughly to the north and south of the equator. In the northern sector, the lines demarcat- ing these zones march horizontally across the continent with almost the precision of the lines of latitude, and the determining factor is that of rainfall. The Mediterranean zone, with its coastal plains watered by regular winter rains, and at its western end the high pas- tures of the Atlas ranges, is bordered by the arid and stony Sahara, measuring more than miles from north to south, and stretching for more than miles from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea. On its southern ‘shore’ (in Arabic, sahel) the desert merges into the open savanna of the Sahel, free from the tsetse-fly and offering pasture for most domestic animals, notably, cattle, sheep and goats, donkeys and the small horses native to the region. Southwards, the Sahel merges into the bush and light woodland of the Sudanic belt, offering rainfall enough for cereal agriculture, but where infestation by tsetse-fly poses a mortal danger to the larger domestic animals, espe- cially to cattle and all the regular beasts of burden and traction. The hard, sun-baked soil must be tilled with hoes and not with ploughs. The bush of the Sudanic belt ends abruptly with the margin of the equatorial forest, where vegetables and root crops, nut and fruit trees can be grown in clearings. There is no doubt that during the second millennium a general drying of the climate has caused the zonal boundaries to shift southwards, perhaps by as much as miles, but the sequence of the vegetation zones has been largely maintained. South of the equator, the vegetation map shows a very different picture. Here, the vegetation zones criss-cross, with forest or woodland running from the Cameroon highlands in the north-west to coastal Mozambique in the south-east, and dry savanna from Somalia in the north-east to Namibia in the south-west. Here, the determinating factor is not so much rainfall as height above sea level. Medieval Africa, – Very much of Africa south of the equator is covered by mountain and tableland at heights varying from to feet, with peaks rising to , feet or even more. This mountain country begins in the Ethiopian highlands and runs with scarcely a break from there to the South African highveld. Most of it is in vegetational terms savanna, corresponding to the Sahelian and Sudanic belts of Africa north of the equator. Much of it until recently abounded in wild game and was heavily infested by tsetse-fly. But over the course of years of bush-clearing by humans, fly-free grasslands were gradually estab- lished on a scale which enabled cattle pastoralism to become the main occupation of significant groups of people living all the way down the highland spine of the subcontinent at heights between and feet. This central tableland is cut through by two great vol- canic rifts, one running down the centre of the Ethiopian and Kenyan highlands, and the other cleaving the watershed which divides the Congo drainage system from that of the Nile.

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